14 DAY TRIAL // Here is yet another news article about a fresh product that a company is said to be making, using a supposedly new chip, and which will allegedly come out soon enough for consumers not to completely forget about its alleged existence. What may come as a surprise, however, is the fact that the laptop which, according to Fudzilla, was listed by an online retailer, is not another Pineview netbook a certain company is reported to be planning for launch at CES.
The article describes the alleged laptop model as “a new ASUS notebook powered by a brand new Intel CPU and a fresh ATI GPU.” Verily, finding out about a mobile PC that is not a Pineview netbook may come as a refreshment to end-users interested in what the post-CES period may bring.
The notebook will likely cover the mid-end segment, although its cumulative speed will likely surpass that of some of the high-end notebooks currently in existence. The product is said to be based on the not-so-recent ASUS X77.
This is a 17.3-inch notebook and the new SKU described by Fudzilla implies that the device will make use of Intel's dual-core Arrandale CPU, which has integrated graphics and is based on the 32nm manufacturing process. The revised X77 will make use of a fresh ATI video card known as ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730. This adapter is suspected to make use of GDDR3 memory instead of GDDR5, although no exact specifications are known at this time.
The other “details” of the ASUS X77 laptop include two 500GB hard drives, 4GB of memory, an LED screen capable of a maximum resolution of 1,900 x 1,600 and connectors for eSATA and HDMI. These specs will likely go well with the new GPU, even if the graphics card itself proves to be somewhat less powerful than the Radeon HD 5750 and 5770 adapters.
Although no further details are known, the device is expected to become available in mid-January, at a price revolving around €1,000 ($1,432).